Poem
This is a story from Jewish folklore.
Once upon a time there was a big, funny-looking bird, and he was called The Ziz.
He was so large his wingspan could block out the sun.
He was king of all the birds and of the skies, just as the whale was king of the oceans.
There was just one thing about this great bird. He was terribly, horribly, clumsy.
Down on Earth, the Children of the Village were all excited about the garden they were planting. They carefully tilled the soil, and they carefully planted seeds, and they carefully watered them -- not too much water so they wouldn't wash away, and they oh so carefully pulled up only the weeds, taking extra care to make sure not to hurt the tender shoots of the young plants.
And their garden grew, and grew, and grew.
Finally it was harvest time, and the children all gathered at the garden to help bring In the wonderful vegetables and flowers they had created. And unfortunately, this was the day the Ziz, flying through his kingdom of the skies, happened to look down and see the garden.
Well, the Ziz saw that the children were excited, and he saw that a patch of earth that had been fallow now was full of many green growing things, and he wanted to come closer to look. He flew closer, and closer, and closer. His great wings blocked out the sun. The children thought It was nighttime, so they all went home. The Ziz was so entranced by what he saw that he flew too close to Earth and the wind from his great wings blew over all the plants the children had worked so hard to grow -- snapped them off, every plant, right at the stems. He ruined the garden!
Well, when the Ziz realized what he had done, he felt terrible. He flew up to Mt. Sinai to ask God what he could do to make it up to the children. God told the Ziz to search the entire world and bring back the hardest word.
The Ziz flew to many countries and came back with many hard words. He flew to Germany and came back with schadenfreude, but that wasn't it. He flew to America and came back with Unitarian Universalist, but that wasn't it. Finally he told God he just couldn't find the word, and he was sorry.
Well bingo! That's It, God told him. That's the word! You're sorry. And he Instructed the Ziz to fly down and say that very hard word to the children whose garden he had ruined.
And the Ziz found that It WAS very hard to say "I'm sorry," because when he said it he could feel inside himself how very much he had hurt the children, and that didn't feel good at all. But after he said It, he felt better, and the children felt better too.
About the Kol Nidre
These are the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah last Thursday, the New Year on the traditional Jewish calendar, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which comes next Saturday. On the Day of Atonement, Jews gather in synagogues and temples and hear a prayer, the Kol Nidre, that absolves them from vows or commitments they have made to God or to themselves and have not been able to keep. There are probably more Jews in synagogue to hear this prayer than on any other day of the year.
In the Jewish tradition, the word is powerful; in the beginning it was words that God used to separate light from darkness and speak the world into being. As human beings, we make and unmake reality with our promises and commitments, with the words we speak to ourselves and one another. What you are about to hear is composer Max Bruch’s interpretation of the tune to which this powerful prayer is sung.
Litany of Atonement
When beginning something new – new year in the church calendar, a new job, even sometimes a new day – it is important to make room in our hearts and minds. How many promises have we kept in the past year? What are the good intentions we have not yet been able to live into? Where have we strayed from our path, and what do we need to set our course right?
I’d like to invite everyone to rise in body or spirit for an exercise in making room. This is a Litany of Atonement.
[by Robert Eller-Isaacs]
For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For each time that our fears have made us rigid and inaccessible:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For each time that we have struck out in anger without just cause:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For the selfishness that sets us apart and alone:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For falling short of the admonitions of the spirit:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For losing sight of our unity:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
For those and for so many acts both evident and subtle which have fueled the illusion of separateness:
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love.
Homily: The Open Book
This is the time for turning. The temperatures are turning cooler. Before long the leaves will be dazzling. Children and their parents have already turned from the long days of summer to the crazybusy days of another school year. In this church, we have returned to the excitement of a new season spent building community together.
All over the world, Muslims are turning from their normal routines, turning inward to spend each day of this Ramadan month contemplating their inner lives, their relationship to God, and learning in their own bellies what it is to be hungry, to go through the day without food.
For Jews, it is a time of returning – returning to their highest aspirations, returning to God, returning to the path they might have strayed from in the past year. Over the years, I have watched my Jewish friends with great admiration for the custom of clearing up that happens each year at Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. Even before the New Year, my friend Linda Blachman starts making lists. Whom does she need to forgive, to go into the New Year with a pure heart? Whom does she need to ask to forgive her?
I sometimes make resolutions in January, but by then I’m usually so worn out from holiday cheer that I don’t put a lot of attention on them. I notice that I tend to make the same ones every year, with minor adjustments – say, 15 pounds instead of 10. I don’t tend to make lists of people I might have wronged, or who have wronged me, and go about setting it right.
Nor do I at that time put serious attention onto my place in the world – my place in relation to people I love, my privileged place in relation to most people in the world. That’s the silly season, and I don’t think about atonement.
Atonement – now there’s a word not often heard in Unitarian Universalist churches. It carries some heavy theological freight, including the idea of some Christian groups that Jesus’s crucifixion and death were meant as a sacrificial expiation for the sins of humanity. Most Unitarian Universalists reject that theology, but I hate to see this perfectly good word – atonement -- lost to us. The root of this word is exactly as it appears in English –at one ment, becoming at one, in accord, reconciled.
How to become at one, return to being at one with my family, when I may have hurt them, or been hurt by them? How to become at one within this church, when some of us think we are putting our emphasis in the wrong areas, or not doing enough or being enough, not being fully who we might be? And in the name of all that is Holy, how are those of us who are so blessed with privilege of wealth and power to be at one in a world where these gifts are so unequally shared?
These are powerful questions, questions that are not likely to be answered in any one year, or any one season, but through a lifetime of walking consciously with the questions in our hearts. We may come close to an answer at times, in our individual acts of service and of kindness, in our moments of forgiveness. In the church, which lives beyond any of our individual lives, we answer it with the way we love one another, the way we walk together.
The Jewish story about this time of year is this: God has written your name in one of two books for the year ahead: The Book of Life, or the Book of Death. For these 10 days, the first of the New Year, the books are open. In these days, the Days of Awe, you can change your fate. You do this with acts of contrition – perhaps getting into right relationship with a person you have wronged; perhaps forgiving someone who has wronged you; perhaps through acts of charity and service.
Mystical Judaism takes this idea a step further. Every act you do at any time of the year, any act at all for good or ill, not only affects your own fate but also the fate of the world. We can never know when our individual acts of mercy or of justice might be the very ones that are needed to redeem a shattered world. Not only do these mitzvot, these blessed acts, redeem the world – they affect the inner life even of God, bringing God into balance within Godself, and with the world.
That’s the good news. The not so good news is that it works the other way too: We can’t know to what extent our carelessness, our acts both evident and subtle that fuel the illusion of separateness – we can’t know whether our careless act was the one that postponed redemption for another two millennia or so.
Rigorous as it is, I love this way of thinking about my life. If I think this way, everything I do matters more than I will ever know. If I think this way, I am more likely, little by little, to move through my life conscious that my actions and my speech have an impact on the world.
Part of what we do for one another as a church community is create opportunities for each of us, and all of us together, to move toward at-one-ment, to move into right relation with who we are and our place in the world. Today is the first Sunday you can sign up for Working Together Week, that time in our New Year when members of this church move out into the community in acts of service. Please pick up the catalogue of opportunities that have been created for you by members and friends of the Social Action Council. Look it over carefully, and pick one or more that will change your heart. One small act of service, consciously undertaken – one that changes you as well as doing something positive in the community – it’s impossible to know what force for good you might set in motion. Or think about traveling with the group of us going to New Orleans in October. The acts of service we and thousands of others do in that beautiful, ravaged city are not just about gutting houses and putting up drywall. They are about putting up hope; they are about what is reborn when one person helps another. There is no telling what this might begin, when two people meet across racial, cultural, class divides and connect in hope. You can sign up to go to New Orleans in Fellowship Hall as well.
This is the time for turning. For Unitarian Universalists, redemption is always possible; the book is always open. Are you reconciled within yourself? Are you on your path? May we walk together with you?
